Latest Articles
We are encouraged to rely more and more on government officials to do for us what we could equally well do for ourselves—and, maybe more importantly, not to do what might help us solve our own problems.
Sep 08 2024
10 mins
If we imagine a metric called the Pinocchio Scale, which measures the number of lies told by a politician as a percentage of his or her overall public statements, our current prime minister (for want of a better description), Airbus Albo, has moved well into uncharted territory.
Sep 06 2024
5 mins
The Weasel ‘We’
The Weasel “We”
Sir: In their article “Anglophobia: The Unrecognised Hatred” (April 2022) Richard Harrison and Frank Salter quote Colin Tatz, who condemned Australia in terms of the first person plural: “We are fundamentally a racist society …” Harrison and Salter expose Tatz’s manipulation of the weasel word we, by pointing out that Tatz “was not genuinely pleading guilty or identifying with the nation. He was blaming others, the masses, the Anglo Australians.”
This psychological strategy of pretending to be honest, humble and remorseful as a cover for actually wallowing in self-righteous condemnation of one’s fellow citizens, was dissected at the beginning of the Second World War by the Christian writer C.S. Lewis in his essay “Dangers of National Repentance”.
Lewis’s target is clever young people who have “drunk in almost with [their] mother’s milk a distrust of English statesmen and a contempt for the manners, pleasures and enthusiasms of…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins
